Phantom EXE
by formadscience
Summary: Sam convinces Danny to try out one of his parents' inventions that's supposed to take a human into the Net. Danny hoped to be able to meet his NetNavi, Phantom, face to face. Naturally, things don't happen exactly as they expected.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: So, this is a crossover AU of Danny Phantom and MegaMan Battle Network. MMBN characters won't make an appearance, though, so you probably don't need to know much about MMBN to understand it. Basically, all ghosts are AIs called NetNavis, except for the animal-like or otherwise non-sentient ones, which are viruses.

Anyway, enjoy.

* * *

As he watched his friends carry his unconscious body up to his bedroom, Danny realized exactly how stupid of an idea it was to test out his parents' unfinished inventions. In retrospect, he really should have seen this coming, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Initially, Danny was only planning on showing Sam and Tucker around his parents' lab. Being experts in virus research, they naturally had a lot of cool stuff in there. The place had wall-to-wall monitors connected to powerful computers, many of which were entirely dedicated to virus containment and observation.

There was one particular machine they wanted to see: the helmet that put your consciousness in the Net, allowing you to directly interact with viruses and NetNavis alike. His parents called it the Net Portal. He had always been curious about it, but since it didn't work quite right, he never had the courage to try it out.

"So, it doesn't actually take you into the Net?" Tucker asked, holding the helmet up to his face to get a better look.

"No, it does," Danny clarified. "I see them do it all the time. Apparently some other function isn't working right. They've been trying to figure out how to manually NetBattle instead of relying on Navis to do it for them." Danny's PET buzzed in his pocket. That usually meant his NetNavi, Phantom, had something to say, so he took it out and flipped it open.

"Also, they could be back any minute, so we should probably make this quick," Phantom said.

"If it works, then what are you waiting for?" Sam said as she snatched the helmet out of Tucker's grip and handed it to Danny. "You can visit the Net in person! Aren't you curious? You gotta check it out!"

"Yeah, that does sound cool," Danny admitted.

"And I'd finally get to meet you face to face," Phantom added.

Danny was also looking forward that, having only ever seen Phantom through a digital screen. That thought alone was enough for Danny to make up his mind.

He jacked his PET into the helmet and put it on.

"Well, here goes nothing," he said as he started up the machine. In an instant, Danny's view switched from looking at his friends directly in front of him to looking at them through a camera. He watched his body go limp as Sam and Tucker rushed to catch him and sit him down on a nearby chair.

"Woah! You okay, Danny?" Sam asked Danny's unconscious body.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Danny replied, hoping they could hear him. Luckily, it seemed that the helmet was connected to one of the lab's many computers, because they immediately turned to face him.

"Well, that could have gone a lot worse," he heard Phantom say. Danny looked over his shoulder to find Phantom standing next to him with his arms crossed.

Seeing him in person felt different from seeing him through the screen of his PET. He could see Phantom in a lot better detail. Neither his black jumpsuit nor his white gloves and boots looked like any sort of material Danny had ever seen before, but he supposed that was only natural, considering all of it was digital. As usual, Danny couldn't see anything past the visor of Phantom's black and white helmet, except for the glow of his bright green eyes. Danny had never seen Phantom's face without it, so he wasn't sure if the visor could even be removed at all.

"Man, that is so cool," Tucker said, snapping Danny back to reality. "What's it like?"

"I dunno. I don't feel that different," Danny said. He looked down at himself and was surprised to find that he looked sort of transparent, like a hologram. He didn't look very solid, so he wondered if he was able to touch anything. He reached out to touch Phantom's arm.

The world shifted around him. Suddenly, he found himself alone, staring at Sam and Tucker's shocked faces.

"What happened? Where'd Danny go?" Tucker asked.

"I'm right here," he said. Was he missing something? He should have shown up on the screen, since he was pretty sure he hadn't turned invisible.

"Phantom, this isn't the time for joking around! Where is Danny?" Sam demanded.

"I'm not joking around, I'm-" he started, but then he realized that something was off. He held a hand in front of his face and was only half surprised to find he was wearing white gloves. "Huh. I... think we might have fused?"

"Wait… So you're…?" Tucker said, putting the pieces together.

"I'm Danny and Phantom," he said. Strangely enough, even though both names were his, neither one felt quite right anymore. Danny Phantom, perhaps? He wished there was a better way to use both of his names at once, but it would have to do.

"Can you unfuse?" Sam asked.

"I'll try," Phantom said, though he hadn't the slightest idea how. He wasn't even sure how it happened in the first place.

He tried imagining himself unfusing, but that didn't do anything. It only left him unsettled at how much concentration it took to remember what it was like being two separate people, despite the fact that he had been two people up until a couple minutes ago. Then, he tried willing himself to unfuse, but he could only repeat _unfuse, unfuse, unfuse_ in his head for so long before he got tired of it and gave up. He'd have to think of something else.

"No luck. Can you guys take a closer look at the helmet? Maybe there's some button on there that could fix this," Phantom suggested.

Sam and Tucker grabbed the helmet to inspect it, turning it around as Danny's limp body flopped around along with it.

"I found something!" Sam announced. "There's this switch labelled 'Synchro,' and it's switched on right now."

"'Synchro' as in 'Full Synchro' as in 'the minds of Navi and operator become one'? Yeah, that sounds like it would do it," Tucker agreed. "Try switching it off, Sam."

There was a _click_ followed by silence as all three of them waited expectantly.

"Uh-oh," Sam said a moment later. "I think I hear your parents' car in the driveway."

"Quick! Jack me out!" Phantom said, panicked.

Sam unplugged the PET from the helmet, turned the helmet off, and took it off Danny's head, but didn't know what to do when his body remained unresponsive.

"I may not have fully thought this through," Phantom said from inside the PET. "Look, just carry me to my room, we'll figure it out from there."

Tucker grabbed Danny's torso, and Sam followed his lead, attempting to carry Danny's legs and his PET at the same time. They made it out of the lab and almost all the way to Danny's bedroom when Danny's parents opened the front door.

"Hi Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, Danny's asleep so we're carrying him to his room, nothing's wrong, later!" Sam said hurriedly as she and Tucker put Danny on his bed and closed the door.

It took at least half an hour for them to get Danny's body up and moving again. Sam and Tucker's initial relief switched back to worry when Danny winced and put his hand to his forehead, but Phantom was the one that said "Ow, killer headache."

Danny spent a lot of time looking at himself through the PET. Phantom didn't have the visor down for the first time ever, and his face didn't look anything like he would expect. Aside from the glowing green eyes and the white bangs poking out from under his helmet, he looked just like Danny.

He couldn't be sure, but as far as he could tell, his human body and his Navi body were blinking in unison.

"This is really weird," both of him said at once. Well, having his real body regain consciousness was sort of an improvement. The biggest problem was getting the hang of controlling two bodies at once. So far, he had little control over which mouth he was speaking from.

"Yeah, because everything was completely normal before you finally started moving again," Sam said sarcastically.

"So, this is weird to you, but being a Navi wasn't?" Tucker asked.

"Not 'wasn't,'" Danny corrected, "'isn't.'"

Sam and Tucker looked at him like he had suddenly started talking backwards.

"I'm still fused, or in 'Full Synchro,' or whatever it's called," Danny explained. "Being able to control both bodies again doesn't change the fact that I'm still one person."

"Man, you're right," Tucker said. "This is really weird. Are you gonna stay like this? What do we even call you now, Danny or Phantom?"

"I've been considering 'Danny Phantom,'" Phantom said.

"Are you sure we shouldn't tell you parents about this?" Tucker asked. "They are experts at this sort of stuff."

"I- I don't know," Danny said. "I'm sort of… _conflicted_ about it, I guess."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked.

"Well, Danny probably would have wanted to tell my parents about it right away, but Phantom wouldn't have told them unless it was absolutely necessary." Phantom said.

"So I have one part of me that trusts that they'd solve the issue, and another part of me that's afraid of what they'd do with me afterwards." Danny continued.

"Oh," Sam realized, "you mean because of…"

"Yeah," Danny said. He'd told her and Tucker the story of how Danny and Phantom met, so they understood why his parents would make him uncomfortable.

"Don't worry, Danny," Tucker said, putting his arm around Danny's shoulder. "We won't tell nobody if you don't want us to."

"Yeah," Sam agreed, "it'll be our secret."

"Thanks, guys," Danny said, relieved.

* * *

A/N: Technically speaking, this isn't exactly how Full Synchro is supposed to work, but there's, like, three different canons for how Full Synchro works, so whatever. Actually, it's pretty close to the manga version of Full Synchro, with a few exceptions.

Anyway, I'm not sure how long this is going to be, but I do have at least one more chapter in the works.


	2. Chapter 2

From the moment Phantom was created nine years ago, his creators, Jack and Maddie, gave him two absolute truths: that viruses were evil beings that only desired destruction and therefore must be deleted, and that evil Navis were as bad as viruses and were to be treated as such.

At first, he had accepted these truths. Deleting viruses and Navis was what he was programmed for, after all. Every virus he encountered tried to delete him, so he did the same to them.

Before long, his creators decided he was ready to delete criminal Undernet Navis to assist with their work as Official NetBattlers, and Phantom found that it was significantly harder than deleting viruses. Sneaking up on them was easy; if he used his invisibility, they never saw him coming. A well-placed ectobuster shot also ensured that they went down quickly. The hardest part, though, was the moment between when the invisibility dropped and when he fired the ectobuster.

If he was lucky, they never knew he was there until he fired. Otherwise, he saw their eyes widen as they realized what was about to happen to them. He saw them try to fight back even though it was already too late for them. He saw them try to escape or beg their operators to jack them out immediately. Few escaped successfully, and each time, Jack and Maddie expressed their disappointment at his failure. Phantom, however, was secretly relieved.

He never could bring himself to tell them about it. He himself was troubled that he felt that way. He knew that these Navis were criminals and most of them would gladly delete him along with countless innocent Navis, and they would certainly not feel any sort of remorse after doing so.

Eventually, he requested that he take a break from deleting Navis and stick to virus busting for a while. They seemed confused, but granted his request. The plan worked well enough, until he encountered a virus that looked like a small, green dog.

He had seen others of its type before. Guard Dog viruses typically appeared to be as small as a puppy in order to easily dodge attacks, then grew about five times larger when they bit you. But this one was the only one he'd encountered that, upon seeing him, started running toward him with its tail wagging and while still being puppy sized. He was so confused that he was caught completely off guard when it tackled him to the ground, barking excitedly and licking his face.

"Um… what should I do?" he asked.

"Don't let it confuse you! Just do what you do to every other stinkin', no good virus!" Jack answered enthusiastically.

"Hold on, Jack," Maddie said, "that's quite an advanced tactic for a Guard Dog. It could be a new type. Maybe we should take a closer look at its code first."

"I don't think it's a trick," Phantom said, pushing the Guard Dog off of himself. "If it was only waiting for me to let my guard down, wouldn't it have tried to bite me by now?"

"That's impossible. It _must_ be a trick. All viruses are evil, Phantom. You know that," Maddie reminded him.

Phantom stood up, and the Guard Dog was still sitting in front of him, panting and looking at him expectantly.

"I know," he said, "but maybe this one just wants something."

"That's ridiculous!" Jack said. "It's a virus, what could it possibly want other than deleting Navis and destroying systems?"

Phantom wondered that himself. He didn't even have anything on him that he could give the virus, other than some bug fragments. Viruses he defeated dropped them all the time, so he had way too many of those things. He never knew what to do with them, anyway, so giving one to a virus to get it to go away seemed like it was worth a shot.

He held the bug frag out towards the Guard Dog. It ate it right out of his hand, gobbling it up happily. Phantom wondered if that's what it wanted from the start. Did viruses get hungry for bug frags? Did it somehow know he had virus food with him? Did it approach Phantom in the hopes that he'd give it food, or was it only trying to befriend him? He'd never thought about the motivations of viruses before meeting this one. Was it different from the others, or was this just the first time he'd ever given one a chance?

"Nice going, Phantom! It's got its guard down. Now is the perfect opportunity to blast it to pieces while it's distracted!" Jack said.

"No," Phantom said, "I don't want to."

"You don't want to?" Jack repeated, as if the idea of Phantom having his own desires was a foreign one.

"I won't delete it," Phantom said firmly.

"Well, why the heck not?" Jack asked.

"Because it's not hurting anybody, and I have no reason to," Phantom said.

"No reason to delete it? It's a virus," Maddie said. "No matter how strangely it acts, violence and destruction are what it was made for. You have no reason to _spare it_."

"I delete viruses because they're evil and therefore require deletion," Phantom said. "This one is not evil, so it does not require deletion." Maddie looked worried.

"Maybe we should go back to deleting evil Navis, then," she suggested.

"I don't want to do that either," Phantom said. "If I delete a Navi because they're evil, and they're evil because they delete other Navis, then what does that make me?" Until he spat these words at his creators, he hadn't realized how angry he had become.

Jack and Maddie shot each other a look, then turned around to talk to each other out of range of the microphone. Phantom could only pick up bits and pieces of their conversation.

"...very worrying behavior…"

"...should start over...make another one…"

"...can't just delete him, can we?"

"Don't delete him!" yelled a voice Phantom had never heard before. A boy that looked about six years old stepped out from behind a workbench.

"Danny? How long have you been in here?" Jack asked.

"I wanted to watch him play with the puppy," Danny admitted. "Don't delete him! He can be my Navi and we can play with the puppy together!"

"Danny, sweetie," Maddie said, crouching down to meet his eyes, "I know how much you want your own Navi, and I promised we'd get you one for your birthday. You just have to be patient."

"But Sam and Tucker already have Dora and Wulf!" Danny protested. "I'm the only one that doesn't have one! Please?"

"Don't worry, Danny-boy, you'll get a Navi that's way cooler than this one," Jack assured him.

"But I want that one. He's really cool, and super tough, and he's got a pet puppy!" Danny said excitedly.

"It's not a pet," Maddie corrected, "and he might not want to-"

"I'm okay with it," Phantom said before she could finish. It would probably be better than whatever the alternative was.

"Well, alright, if you're both sure," Maddie said, having run out of arguments. She jacked Phantom out of the lab computer and handed the PET to Danny. Danny smiled when he saw Phantom on the screen.

"I'm Danny, what's your name?" Danny asked.

"Phantom," he answered.

"Just remember," Maddie said, "if Phantom does or says anything that scares you, tell us right away, sweetie, and we'll get you a new Navi."

"Nuh-uh," Danny said, shaking his head. "That won't happen, 'cause me and Phantom are gonna be friends now."

Being with Danny was _definitely_ better than the alternative.


	3. Chapter 3

The Full Synchro problem didn't look like it was getting solved anytime soon. Whatever his parents' machine did to him, it was, apparently, permanent. Thankfully, his parents were oblivious as always, so caught up with putting the final touches on the Net Portal that they didn't notice that anything was different with Danny at all. However, his sister, Jazz, was slightly more observant.

"Are you okay, Danny?" she asked him in the middle of breakfast one day.

"Yeah, why?" Danny asked, confused.

"You're halfway finished with your cereal and you haven't said a word to Phantom," Jazz pointed out. "You two have been like this all week. Usually, you talk to each other nonstop all the way to school. Did you have a fight?"

"No, nothing like that. We're getting along fine, I swear. It's just… sort of complicated," Danny said. He didn't have much to say to Phantom when their minds were fused, but he couldn't tell Jazz that.

"Well, if you say so," Jazz said, clearly suspicious, but trying not to pry. He would have taken out his PET to try to convince her nothing was wrong, but he still wasn't entirely confident in his ability to control both his physical and digital body at the same time.

He was starting to get the hang of it, but there were still a few problems. For one thing, whenever he thought about doing anything on the Net, he started to asleep in the real world as his consciousness shifted over to Phantom. He'd been getting in a lot of trouble for regularly falling asleep in class in the week since the accident, and Mr. Falluca said that he'd be banned from handling beakers if he dropped one more of them. Really, it was a miracle that he hadn't gotten any injuries that way. Gym class, however, was a whole other story. The bruise on his chest still hurt from the time it happened right when a basketball was being passed to him.

"Hey, Danny, I've been wondering. Does it ever work the other way around?" Tucker asked before school that morning. "Like, does Phantom ever go into sleep mode when you focus on the real world?"

"Well, not exactly," Danny said. "It doesn't happen randomly during the day, but I've been going into sleep mode every night when I go to bed."

"Is that why you've been late for school so many times this week?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, the PET's alarm function doesn't really work if I can't use it until I wake up," Danny said. "I had to buy an actual alarm clock. I didn't even think anyone still used them anymore."

Their conversation was interrupted by the bell ringing, warning students that they only had a minute left until class started.

"Speaking of being late," Sam said, "We better get to class."

* * *

Even if it was the only class he shared with both Sam and Tucker, Danny was not looking forward to virus busting. Dealing with Dash in virus busting was almost as bad as being in the same gym class as him. Dash's NetNavi, Skulker, hated Phantom just as much as Dash hated Danny. As much as Danny hated to admit it, Dash and Skulker were skilled NetBattlers, but whenever Dash wasn't the best in the class, he took it out on Danny. Usually, he was willing to avoid standing out enough that Dash was satisfied, but ever since the accident, Danny was on a roll. He couldn't help but test his limits and find out what he was capable of, and Dash grew more irritable by the day.

"You're going down today, Fenton," Dash said as soon as Danny sat down at his desk. Dash's desk was in front of his, so there was no avoiding his daily taunts.

"We're fighting viruses, Dash, not each other," Danny retorted.

"Yeah, and I'm going to destroy you at that!" Dash said.

"How do you plan to do that? Danny's acing this class, in case you haven't noticed," Sam said.

"I don't know how Fen-turd does that while drooling on his desk every day, but he won't be able to keep it up for much longer," Dash threatened.

"Alright, class, let's get started," Mr. Lancer announced. "Everyone, jack into your desks."

Danny could see everyone jacking in one by one through the monitor in his desk as well as the electronic whiteboard at the front of the room. Sam and Tucker plugged their PETs into their desks on either side of him, and Danny followed soon after.

Dora and Wulf were more beast-like in appearance than any other Navis he knew, aside from Frostbite. Dora, of course, still achieved the sort of elegance worthy of a princess, with her blue dragon scales blending perfectly with her medieval-style dress. Wulf, on the other hand, looked as much like a werewolf as a Navi could look, though his wild appearance didn't match his personality at all.

"Hey, guys," Phantom greeted them.

"Hello, friend," Wulf said in Esperanto. Why Tucker preferred Esperanto to be Wulf's default language was beyond Phantom, but at least his translation software allowed him to understand Wulf with little difficulty.

"Sir Phantom, your helmet," Dora reminded him.

"Oh, right," Phantom said as he pulled his visor down. "Thanks, Dora." He took a quick look around to make sure nobody saw, then sighed in relief when he didn't catch a single glance in his direction. He would have a lot of explaining to do if anyone saw his face and wondered why Phantom looked like Danny's green-eyed Navi twin brother.

"Alright, class," Mr. Lancer said as his Navi, Frostbite, jacked in while carrying a block of ice. It was almost bigger than he was, which was really saying something considering Frostbite was a giant yeti. "The virus we'll be taking a look at today may seem large and intimidating, but I think you'll find that there's a rather simple method to deleting it. Frostbite, if you would."

Frostbite touched the block of ice, thawing it out to reveal a virus that resembled an enormous, blue tiger. Phantom recognized it as a Monster Cat virus, but he doubted that was the virus Mr. Lancer had intended to use, since it was native to the Undernet. No matter how skilled at virus busting they were, Mr. Lancer would never have sent Frostbite anywhere as dangerous and infested with criminals as the Undernet, not to mention the fact that no one else in his class was anywhere near skilled enough to fight Undernet viruses.

"That is not the virus I froze," Frostbite said, confused.

If Phantom had to guess, he'd say Dash and Skulker were behind this, if the smug look on Skulker's face was any indication. Phantom didn't know exactly how he had made the switch, but he was sure Skulker, the self-proclaimed Net's greatest hunter, had found a way to do it. The Monster Cat was still momentarily disoriented from being frozen, so Phantom had to act quickly before it tried to delete every Navi in the class.

"Everyone jack out, that's an Undernet virus!" Phantom shouted.

Almost everyone was terrified enough that they did as he said. Skulker, however, stood in the corner of the digital classroom, smirking as if daring Phantom to run away or else get himself deleted trying to fight the virus. It would have been a brilliant plan if they were actually able to defeat the thing on their own, which Phantom doubted. Capturing a virus wasn't the same as deleting it, and Phantom had spent enough time in the Undernet to know that civilian Navis were no match for Undernet viruses. He had the sinking feeling that they were betting on him fighting the thing and losing so they could deal the finishing blow and steal the credit.

"We've got your back, dude," Tucker said, with Wulf and Dora nodding in agreement.

The Monster Cat lunged at Frostbite, who froze its claws in an attempt to disarm the virus, but it broke free within seconds. Dora's fire breath attack, Wulf's claws, and Phantom's ectobuster shots combined weren't enough to get the Monster Cat's attention as it relentlessly attacked Frostbite.

Phantom could tell from Frostbite's attack pattern that the chip folder he had equipped was the one he used for virus busting demonstrations. The one he used for serious fights had plenty of ice and water element chips. Aside from his basic freezing abilities, Frostbite was sticking to common, low-level attacks, like Cannon and Sword chips. Unable to switch folders in the middle of a battle, Frostbite was barely putting a dent in the virus. Luckily, the folder did have at least one ice chip in it. Frostbite's Freeze Shot left the Monster Cat frozen solid, but only for a moment before the effect wore off.

"You've fought one of these before?" Frostbite asked, taking advantage of the break in the battle.

"Yeah, lots of times, with my- uh, Danny's parents," Phantom said. That was a close one. He really needed to remember to be more careful about calling them his parents as Phantom. It was weird enough when he almost referred to them his creators as Danny.

"Of all the times for Danny to fall asleep," he heard Mr. Lancer mumble.

Crap, he passed out already? He hadn't even realized that his focus had completely shifted away from the real world.

"Can you delete one without the help of your NetOp?" Frostbite asked.

"Yeah, probably," Phantom answered.

Recently, Phantom had gotten plenty of experience fighting without chips. As far as anyone else knew, Danny was asleep and therefore was unable to select battle chips for Phantom. It seemed like a bad idea to let anyone know that he had full access to his entire chip folder without any NetOp input, so he had to fight viruses only using his basic abilities: invisibility, flight, and his ectobuster. If he had to, he could use one or two chips, like a Guard or an Ice Blast chip, and say that Danny sent him the chip data before he fell asleep, but that excuse was best used sparingly in case anyone became suspicious.

"Then, I shall leave the rest to you," Frostbite said just before Mr. Lancer jacked him out. After taking so many of the Monster Cat's attacks, he might have gotten deleted if he had fought for much longer.

The virus soon redirected its attention towards Wulf, who was still clawing it from behind. It was only a matter of time before Wulf would have to jack out, too. Tucker was a skilled hacker, but he wasn't the best at NetBattling. Wulf's ability allowed him to create a shortcut to almost anywhere in the Net, so it was easier for them to avoid viruses than delete them. Phantom needed a strategy. If he wanted to be smart about this, he'd have to load at least one chip. He could only hope that he fell asleep _after_ the virus showed up, or it would look really suspicious when he used one of his most powerful chips.

The Sound Blast chip was the obvious choice for this situation. Or almost any situation, really. It was a shame he only had one of them. It was an attack that did a fairly large amount of damage and had a wide area of effect, which made it excellent for crowd control. In this case, however, he chose it for its ability to stun enemies for a few seconds.

Phantom fired the Sound Blast at the Monster Cat, careful to keep Wulf out of the line of fire. The instant the virus was hit, it pulled its claws away from Wulf and up to its ears in an attempt to muffle the attack's terrifyingly loud screech. Phantom took the opportunity to fly over to the Monster Cat and land on its back.

"Hey, Wulf," Phantom said, "I'm taking this thing back to the Undernet. Think you can open up a shortcut?" It wasn't a perfect plan, but if it worked, he'd be able to delete the virus somewhere nobody else would get hurt or see him using battle chips.

"I understand," Wulf said in Esperanto. Once the Monster Cat recovered, Wulf backed up a few steps and waited for the virus to charge at him. Once it did, Wulf used his claws to open up a hole in the empty space in front of him just in time for the Monster Cat to run into it, still unknowingly carrying Phantom on its back.

Once they came out the other side, the hole closing behind them, Phantom flew off the virus's back while it kept charging right into a crowd of Undernet Navis. _Aw, crud,_ he thought, _the shortcut just_ had _to land us right in the middle of Undernet Square_. Not that he blamed Wulf. Wulf had never even been to the Undernet before, and without giving him a specific destination, Phantom could have found himself in much worse areas. But releasing a powerful virus into the most densely populated region of the Undernet was bound to make him even more unpopular with dangerous criminals than he already was. Several dozen of them were already shooting him death glares as he floated above the chaos. Well, this plan suddenly wasn't looking so great anymore.

"Uh, guys? If one of you could jack me out right about now, I'd really appreciate it," he said in desperation. Sam and Tucker couldn't see him on the board anymore, but they could probably still hear him through the PET. He sighed in relief when they jacked him out seconds later.

Danny woke up to Dash's face and nearly jumped back in surprise.

"Dude," Dash said, eyes wide, "what the hell is up with your Navi? That was the craziest thing I've ever seen a Navi do! How did you even sleep through all of that?"

"Uh, sleep through what?" Danny asked in feigned confusion.

"It was amazing!" Paulina said excitedly. "That Undernet virus was totally winning and Frostbite had to jack out, so Phantom flew right on top of it and rode into the Undernet on its back! It's so unfair that such a cool, heroic Navi belongs to a loser like you." Danny wasn't sure whether to feel flattered or insulted.

"Wow, I guess I missed a lot," Danny said, laughing nervously.

"Class, settle down," said Mr. Lancer. "The rest of the period will be a study hall while I get to the bottom of how this whole mess got started."

Predictably, everyone started talking to each other all at once as soon as Lancer sat down at his desk. That made it easier for the trio to discuss what just happened, though they kept Danny's PET open on his desk to keep up appearances. It would have been bad if someone saw Sam and Tucker interrogate Danny about a fight he'd been asleep for.

"So, what happened after you went through the shortcut?" Tucker asked in the hallway after class ended. "You couldn't have deleted it that quickly."

"I didn't actually delete it," Phantom explained, "the shortcut put me in Undernet Square. The thing started wreaking havoc, and since I rode in on it, I might as well have just declared war on the entire Undernet."

"It can't be that bad," Sam tried to reassure him. "You were only there for a few seconds, so there's no way they who you are, right?"

"I'd be surprised if they didn't. I was Danny's parents' Navi for, like, a year," Phantom said. He made sure to be careful how he worded things in case Dash's curiosity got the better of him. Eavesdropping would be easy for him when he was sitting a few feet away. "That might not seem like very long, but as a Navi that's been operated by two Official NetBattlers, Undernet Navis would know who I am even if I _didn't_ delete a ton of them back then."

"So, they _definitely_ know who you are?" Tucker asked. "Yeah, that does sound bad."

"Yeah, basically," Phantom said. "Some of them might even have a grudge."

* * *

"Hey, Danny, what do you think would happen to you if Phantom got deleted?" Tucker asked as they were walking home later that day.

It seemed like a stupid question to Danny. It was like if Tucker had asked him, "What do you think would happen to you if you died?" There was only one real answer to that question, without getting the afterlife involved.

"Well, I'd be deleted, wouldn't I?" Danny said bluntly.

"No, no. What he means is that, even though your minds are fused, you still have two bodies," Sam clarified. "What happens to one if something happens to the other?"

"Huh," he said. He hadn't really thought about it. It seemed like a given that getting deleted would be just as much of a "game over" as if he died. But now that he thought about it, Phantom always had the option of having his data backed up or recovered in case anything happened to him. Would that still be possible if getting deleted caused him to die in the real world simultaneously?

"All the backup data I have now is from before we got fused," Danny realized. "Would it even still be possible to backup my data as I am now?"

"Danny, humans don't _have_ any data," Sam said, as if she wasn't sure if that had occurred to him.

"That's my point," he explained. "Maybe the best we'd be able to do is recover Phantom's data from before this whole mess got started."

"So, then you'd be unfused?" Tucker suggested hopefully.

The idea took Danny by surprise. It had barely been a week, but he had already gotten so used to it that he hadn't bothered considering the possibility of unfusing. As much as it inconvenienced him, he wasn't sure if he'd even want to unfuse anymore.

"Maybe, but I don't want to risk it," Danny said. "That would only be the best case scenario. Worst case scenario, I'd die."

"Yeah, I see your point," Tucker said. "We won't be trying _that_ anytime soon."

Danny couldn't agree more.

* * *

A/N: Some clarification on the Danny/Phantom POV: Since they're basically the same person and there's no real distinction between what Danny's thinking and what Phantom's thinking, I'll be doing a lot of switching back and forth between both names. For the most part, he'll be referred to as "Phantom" when he's doing something in the Net and "Danny" when he's doing something in the real world.

Also, regarding the battle chip system: I'm mostly used to the MMBN games' battle chip system and even though I've played most of the games I'm not 100% sure how battle chips are actually supposed to work? Like, you can sometimes find chips just lying around, so I assume the chips are physical objects that you insert into the PET, but you can also get chips from defeating viruses and through e-mail, so that means they're digital I guess? Maybe they can be both, I don't think it's ever explained. Anyway, the way it works here is that they can be either physical or digital, but with either type, you can only access them in battle if they're one of the 30 chips in the chip folder you have equipped. Physical chips' data is stored in the PET when it's added to the folder. NetOps will select chips to send to their Navi in battle through the PET, and then the Navi can activate them whenever they want while their NetOp chooses the next set of chips.

This chapter introduces some more NetOp-NetNavi pairs, but not every human character will have a ghost from the show as their Navi. Generally, unless stated otherwise, it's safe to assume that every other human character has one of the generic, mass-produced Navis rather than a custom one.


	4. Chapter 4

Danny couldn't help getting nervous every time his parents called him down to the lab to show him something. He kept expecting them to have discovered that he had used the Net Portal without their permission and interrogate him about what happened. What usually happened was that Dad rambled on about a program he created or some virus he found. This time felt different somehow, possibly because of the way they dragged both him and Jazz down to the lab even after Jazz insisted she needed to study for her test and Danny complained that he had homework. Something also seemed off when the Net Portal was not in its usual spot on the workbench, but plugged into the lab's monitor and sitting on a chair in front of it, ready to be used.

"You're gonna love this, kids!" his dad beamed. "All the simulations were successful, so that means we finally get to test it for real!"

"Test what?" Jazz asked. "Doesn't the Net Portal work already?"

"Well, you haven't quite seen everything, yet," Mom said as she quickly typed at the lab computer.

"That's right! The most important function of the Net Portal is finally complete!" Dad declared. "And you two get to be the first to see it in action! Ready, Mads?"

"Almost," Mom said as a Navi appeared on the monitor. Except, on closer examination, it wasn't a Navi at all. It looked more like a mannequin, a white, featureless object in the shape of a person. Danny had a bad feeling about this, even more so when he realized that its size and shape matched Dad perfectly. "Alright, you're good to go," Mom confirmed.

Dad's PET was already jacked into the helmet. That seemed odd considering Danny knew it was empty, though he had no idea why they hadn't tried to recover the Navi or, at the very least, program a new one after the last one got deleted in battle. Dad sat down in the chair and put the helmet on, then went limp as he lost consciousness. Seconds later, he showed up on screen, waving at Danny and Jazz. Danny watched in shock as his dad walked right into the white figure and the two began to blur together, merging into one. When the process was complete, Dad was alone on screen, wearing an orange jumpsuit instead of his usual lab coat. Though Danny couldn't see what it looked like when he used the Net Portal, he imagined it must have been just like that.

"What just happened?" Danny asked, dumbfounded.

"Glad you asked!" Dad said, his voice blasting through the speakers. "This what I built the Net Portal for in the first place. It'll revolutionize NetBattling! One human, no Navi!" For emphasis, he then rapidly cycled through battle chips: turning his hand into a sword, turning invisible, creating a hole in the floor, with such enthusiasm that he seemed to forget about Danny and Jazz altogether.

"How?" Jazz asked, sounding completely lost. "Humans can't use battle chips, can they? And what even _was_ that white thing?"

"It's the shell of a Navi, in a manner of speaking," Mom explained. "It has all of a Navi's abilities, such as the ability to use battle chips, but without the artificial intelligence necessary for using them. Your father fused with it using a method very similar to the Full Synchro phenomenon, giving it the mind it needed."

"So, just out of curiosity, what would have happened if that was an actual Navi instead of just a shell?" Danny asked nervously.

"Absolutely nothing," Mom answered. "There are safeguards to prevent a human fusing with a Navi that way." Danny could only assume that those safeguards were put up _after_ he used the machine.

"What if there weren't, though?" Danny asked. "Hypothetically, I mean."

Mom took a few seconds to consider this, then said, "There are two possibilities. One mind would have to dominate over the other, though there's no telling which one. If not, the result would likely be unstable. The two minds would be in constant conflict, fighting for control. Of course, testing this concept would be highly unethical, so this is only a hypothesis."

"A Navi taking over a human's body? Now, that's a scary thought," Dad chimed in.

It wasn't the answer Danny was expecting. Nothing about it felt right. From the start, he had gotten the vague impression that the accident had made him one person, not quite Danny or Phantom, but both simultaneously. He didn't quite feel unstable, either, and there was no conflict as far as he could tell. Maybe she meant conflicting emotions? It was true that he still had mixed feelings towards his… parents? Creators? He still wasn't sure what to call them. Even so, it wasn't much different from having mixed feelings about anybody else, liking one side of them while hating another.

While Danny considered this, the Net Portal's demonstration continued, with Mom taking control of the Portal and, stepping into the Navi frame, fighting captured viruses. Jazz was watching them with a surprising amount of interest, but Danny was too distracted as he wondered what she would think if he told them the truth. Would Mom revise her hypothesis? Would they even believe him if he told her she was wrong? Maybe Dad would think that he was really Phantom, taking over Danny's body and posing as their son.

He needed to get away. As he slowly made his way back upstairs, he briefly looked back to make sure nobody saw him sneak away. Thankfully, his parents were as preoccupied as ever, but Jazz noticed. She looked a bit worried, but didn't stop him when he walked through the door.

* * *

Video chatting with Sam and Tucker always helped to bring him back to reality. Sure, it didn't make his problems go away and he was still nowhere near seriously considering telling Mom and Dad about what happened, but once he finished telling them what happened, his situation felt slightly less hopeless.

"We could vouch for you, if it would help," Sam offered.

"I doubt it would. Even you guys only have my word to go on here," Danny said. "Who's to say I'm not just a really convincing liar?" He was sure that, if his parents ended up jumping to all the wrong conclusions, they wouldn't accept anything less than solid proof.

"Well, that's not _all_ we have to go on," Tucker said. "You _have_ been acting sort of different since the accident."

"Really?" Danny asked, surprised. "I figured I've been acting more or less the same as usual."

"For the most part, yeah, but, well..." Sam trailed off. "For starters, I've never seen you more serious about virus busting. Sure, you were getting good grades before, but it was just a class to you. Lately, you've been crazy competitive." That didn't surprise him too much. Virus busting had always been Phantom's favorite class, even if Danny had been more indifferent about it.

"Yeah," Tucker agreed, "and remember that time in gym last Thursday when Dash faked a punch to try to make you flinch, but instead, you put your hand up to block it? I swear, you went into some sort of Navi martial arts fighting stance."

"Oh, man, you're right," Danny realized. "I need to be careful about that."

It was hard to ignore years of combat instincts, but he'd have to if he didn't want to make Dash suspicious. Before the accident, Danny hardly ever fought back or retaliated at all, which frustrated Phantom. He couldn't count the number of times Danny and Phantom got into arguments about whether Danny should stick up for himself and tell a teacher.

"It'll probably be fine as long as you don't throw a punch back," Tucker said. "Although, it would be kind of cool if you could kick his butt."

"I don't think I could if I tried," Danny said. "It's not like I've got any more muscle than I had before."

"Not to mention, you'd get suspended for sure," Sam added. As she spoke, her words no longer matched up with her lip movements as the video began to lag and become pixelated. Danny groaned.

"Sorry, guys, I think I have another virus to deal with," he said. It had been happening a lot ever since that day in his virus busting class, and he was sure Undernet Navis were responsible. It was annoying, but he was lucky that it was only viruses so far, considering. Well, mostly viruses, anyway.

"Alright, talk to you later," Sam said.

"Yeah, later," Tucker said as he and Sam ended the video call.

Danny jacked into his computer and wasn't particularly surprised to find it flooded with stacks and stacks of boxes.

"I am BoxMan!" BoxMan announced for about the fifth time in the past three days. "My Boxes of Doom will interfere with your internet connection and make your computer run slowly! BEWARE!" Phantom rolled his eyes.

"Man, you are the most useless Undernet Navi I've ever met. How are you even getting in here?" he asked.

"As if any security _cube_ could stop the all-powerful BoxMan!" BoxMan scoffed. Phantom seriously needed to update the security if someone as weak as this guy could just waltz into his computer from the Net.

"Alright, you've had your fun, now get out," Phantom said as aimed his ectobuster at BoxMan and began charging it.

"Nice try, but you could never hope to defeat-" BoxMan said, stopping mid-sentence as Phantom fired a warning shot that grazed his cheek. "Er, I mean, uh… BEWARE!"

BoxMan retreated back to the Net, leaving behind all of his boxes for Phantom to delete. This was going to take a while.

* * *

"Wait, wasn't I supposed to find two values for x?" Phantom wondered aloud to himself. "Well, that's it, I'm lost. Maybe I should just look at the answers in the back of the book."

Lately, he'd gotten into the habit of doing his homework as Phantom. Somehow, it was easier to focus that way. He didn't see any downside to it until Jazz's Navi, Pandora, walked in on him.

"Excuse me, Phantom, are you here?" Pandora called out to him. As Phantom frantically saved his work and closed it along with his math textbook, he regretted ever giving Jazz and Pandora the code to the security cube. He was so focused on his homework that he didn't even hear the warp pad activate when she came in.

"Yeah, I'm here," Phantom called back, flipping his visor down before going to greet her. "What do you need?"

"I was hoping to talk to you in private," Pandora said.

That was worrying. He got along well enough with Pandora, but he couldn't help but find her a bit intimidating, especially when she was angry. She towered over him, and he always had to tilt his head up when he talked to her. On top of that, her four arms and appearance reminiscent of an ancient Greek soldier didn't make her look any friendlier. She even had flames emitting from the top of the helmet. Whatever she wanted to talk about, he hoped that it wasn't anything too serious.

"Well, Danny fell asleep doing his homework, so you don't have to worry about him listening in," Phantom said.

"Speaking of Danny, have you two been getting along?" Pandora asked, trying to sound casual. _Oh, this again_ , he realized.

"Jazz put you up to this, didn't she?" Phantom guessed. "I don't know what she expects to find. Like Danny told her, we're getting along fine."

"Sorry for sticking my nose in this," Pandora said. "Jazz isn't the only one that's concerned, you know. You and Danny have both been acting a bit strange lately."

"Wait, how have _I_ been acting weird?" Phantom asked. First Sam and Tucker told him he'd been acting differently as Danny, now Pandora thought Phantom was acting strange, too? Keeping up appearances with two identities was exhausting. Although, he should have expected something like this happening eventually, now that he thought about it. Pandora was created before Phantom and later given to Jazz, so she tended to act like something of an older sister due to their similar circumstances. Of course she'd notice the difference.

"Well, I overheard you talking to yourself when I came in," Pandora admitted. "That alone is strange behavior for you, but doing Danny's homework, of all things? I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't heard it myself."

"I, uh," Phantom stammered. "It's not what it looks like, I swear."

"Is that what the fight was about? Has Danny been making you do his homework for him?!" she asked, enraged at the very idea of it. He needed to come up with something, quick, or he wouldn't survive Pandora's fury if she decided to give Danny a piece of her mind.

"Danny was having trouble with a math problem before he fell asleep, and I was trying to figure it out so I could help him with it," Phantom said, hoping the excuse sounded believable enough. "I wasn't going to just do it all for him. And for the last time, we aren't fighting."

"Then, why not just wake him up so you could work on it together?" she asked, sounding a bit skeptical.

"Believe me, I've tried," Phantom said. "He must be pretty exhausted, because nothing worked." Technically, that part was true. He kept trying, but so far, he hadn't figured out how to wake his body up without jacking out. That wasn't a problem when he could head back to where he jacked in from, but that wasn't always going to be the case, as he learned when he went through the shortcut to the Undernet.

"Exhausted from what?" Pandora wondered, crossing both pairs of arms in deep thought. "Jazz was right, there is clearly something off about Danny, but if a fight is not the cause, then what?"

"Beats me. I've been trying to respect his privacy," Phantom said. "I let him know that he can always talk to me about it, but I think he needs the alone time. If it seems like we aren't talking as much, that's why." The longer the conversation went on, the more Phantom was silently panicking. Making things up as he went along would only get him so far before he slipped up. He couldn't tell if he was talking his way out of the situation or digging himself into an even deeper hole, where Jazz was waiting at the bottom, prepared to fuss over him.

"Well, if there's anything I can do, don't hesitate to let me know," Pandora offered.

"Thanks, I appreciate it," Phantom said.

"Now, then, I'll let you get back to Danny's math homework," Pandora said, stepping back onto the warp pad. "By the way, make sure to remind Danny about the reunion this weekend. Knowing him, he'll have forgotten all about it." Once she left, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Hold on, what did she say about a reunion? Was there something happening this weekend? Phantom vaguely remembered his dad going on about being excited to see an old colleague again…

Oh yeah, their college reunion was this weekend, and he and Jazz were getting dragged along with them. With how distracted he'd been, he'd completely forgotten. Crud, he'd been hoping he could talk his way out of having to go. They'd be leaving tomorrow, so it was probably too late for that now. It looked like he could expect his weekend to be excruciatingly boring.

* * *

In the middle of the night, Danny was woken up by beeping. Was that the home security system? What time was it? Whatever, someone else could take care of it. He ignored it and went back to sleep.

Or he tried to, at least. He wasn't sure how long he laid there hoping the beeping would stop, but judging by its persistence, it seemed that his family was somehow sleeping through it. Groaning, he picked up his PET from his nightstand and went to jack into the security panel next to the lightswitch. It was probably just BoxMan again, anyway. Well, if he couldn't stop the guy from getting past security cubes, he could at least give him a good scare and make him rethink trying it again. BoxMan would never see it coming. Literally.

As Phantom searched the security system invisibly, it didn't take long for him to get suspicious about the lack of loud declarations of box-related mayhem. Whatever set off the alarm, it was too subtle to be one of BoxMan's mediocre schemes. It looked like it was something serious this time.

Sure enough, he soon found three vulture-like viruses flying around, scanning the area systematically. Not one to shoot first and ask questions later, Phantom decided to find out what they were searching for, following them into the area dedicated to lab security.

They made it all the way to the lab's security camera controls before Phantom decided that that was as far as he was going to let them get. The walkway was narrow, and they were close enough together that he could hit them all with one chip, so it was the best chance he was going to get. He still wasn't sure what they were searching for, but if it was in the lab, he wasn't about to let them find it. Deactivating his invisibility, he loaded a WideSword chip and swiftly deleted them all in one strike before they could sense his presence.

Though he was glad to have prevented them from fulfilling their goal, Phantom wondered what that goal could have possibly been. The camera wasn't the only thing in the lab connected to the security system, and the viruses could have done a lot of damage if they had accessed any of the other controls. It was clear that they weren't programmed for mindless destruction like the typical viruses that were sent his way.

The biggest mystery, however, was how they got into the security system in the first place. The only way to access it from the Net was through the main lab computer and blocked off by two of the toughest Fenton-programmed security cubes. The viruses didn't look powerful enough to get through them. Could someone else have hacked them? Not many people had the hacking skills to get past Fenton security cubes. Well, not many people other than BoxMan, apparently.

Whatever they were there for, it was a mystery he wasn't going to solve until he at least got some more rest. Sighing, he picked up the data left behind by the viruses. There was some data for a battle chip that he already had a dozen of, some bug frags, and- wait, was that an image file? That might have been what they were scanning for. Maybe he'd be able to figure out their goal tonight after all.

Phantom opened it up to find a photo of Jack Fenton.

* * *

A/N: This chapter took way longer than I thought it would for several reasons including final exams, writer's block, and moving. Hopefully I've made up for the delays with plot! We all know _exactly_ what's going down next chapter.


End file.
